First China Pictures

We are home again but still pretty jet-lagged so if there is any incoherence in this post I'll blame it on that. We stayed in Hong Kong a couple of days, getting our visas for China. Once we had them we took the subway to the border of China, got through customs with no hassles whatsoever and arrived at the border city of Shenzhen as soon as we walked through customs. Shenzhen is famous for its shopping and we did some of that, honing our bargaining skills. The picture below is the train station in Shenzhen where we went to get tickets for the overnight train to Guilin. From Guilin we took a bus to Yangshuo where we spent the rest of our time. We had planned to go on to Shanghai but couldn't tear ourselves away from the beauty of Yangshuo.

This is a picture of XiJe (West Street), the main tourist shopping street in Yangshuo. It was full of shops, restaurants and bars.

Here is Sacha with a group of students who were studying English. Every Wednesday they go out and try to get foreigners who speak English to come and help them practise. It was great fun and they were thrilled to have someone more their own age to talk to.

This is Moon Mountain, one of the most famous mountains in the area. The hills are all made of limestone and riddled with caves. They are called Karst mountains and are all very odd shapes. We rented bikes and went riding with a guide. The amazing thing was that the roads are pretty flat and snake around the bottom of the mountains. I have never seen such amazing scenery in my life.
Here are some more mountains.

When we got back to Hong Kong we had no hotel booked to we went to a tourist service at the railway station and they got us this 5 star hotel that is still not finished, but talk about luxury! It was a great way to end the trip.
The bathroom had a separate tub and shower.
The lobby was gigantic and all made of marble or some sort of granite.
This was the view out the window.
I'll be posting more pictures of our bike rides and boat rides later.

Guess Where We Are

We have arrived at Red Rock in Australia and are experiencing rain instead of snow, a nice change. Today we ate crocodile and kangaroo with lemon myrtle sauce at the Aboriginal Center which was a great way to celebrate the government saying "Sorry" to the Aboriginals.

We spent Chinese New Year in Hong Kong by watching amazing fireworks along with a hundred thousand other people. I have never been part of such a large crowd but it was very orderly and felt quite safe.



We also saw some dragon dancers there that were very impressive.